


Say 'Impala'

by sparxwrites



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pet Angels, Fluff, Gen, Kid Fic, Road Trips, Weechesters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-16
Updated: 2013-08-16
Packaged: 2017-12-23 07:21:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/923513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparxwrites/pseuds/sparxwrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Free angel. Preferably to a broken home. VERY disobedient.</i>
</p>
<p>(Dean finds a box with a surprise in by the side of the road, Sam can't say 'Impala', and John can't find it in himself to say 'no'.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Say 'Impala'

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Free Angel](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/25958) by Unknown (op deleted post, possibly Astroize). 



> This is probably the fluffiest thing I have ever written.

It’s one of those rare afternoons where everyone’s happy. The hunt’s over, something John’s still riding the high from (enough that he’s promised both Sam and Dean ice-cream later, much to their delight; never mind the fact that it’s pouring down with summer rain outside the car windows), and apparently his good mood is enough to make the two children both noisy and cheerful.

“Pam-pam-pam-pam!” cries Sam loudly, grinning, waving pudgy fists up and down in his excitement and kicking out with his feet hard enough to send his car seat wobbling. “Pam-pam-pam!”  
“Im-pa-la,” pronounces Dean slowly and clearly, raising his voice over the music coming from the stereo in the front. He’s slipped his seatbelt (again), wriggled over to sit next to Sam, staring earnestly at his brother as though the fate of the world depends on the two-year-old being able to say ‘Impala’. “C’mon, Sammy, say it! Say Impala.”

“Deenee,” offers Sam, smiling happily and drooling a little. “Pam-pam-pa, Deenee.”  
“Im-pa-la,” reiterates Dean, frustration in his voice.  
“Plam-plam-plaa.”  
“Impala.”  
“Plam-plam-pla!”

“C’mon, Sam,” adds John from the front, eyes flicking up to the rearview mirror to look at his two boys, snuggled together in the back seat and on the verge of laughter. “You can do it, kid. Impala. Im-pa-la.”

“Pim-plam-pla,” chants Sam happily, patting the air and kicking at John’s seat. “Plim-plim-plam-plim, plim-plam-plm-plaaaaaaa!” His voice rises steadily until he’s yelling, edging towards turning the random syllables into a loud, unmelodious song.  
“Ow, ow, okay, kid,” calls John, wincing, making shushing noises along with Dean until Sam’s voice returns to a murmur. “You’ve got a hell of a set of lungs on you, Sam.”

Dean’s not put off, though. “Im-pa-la,” he insists, and John groans.  
“Plim plam, plim plam,” sing-songs Sam, not even looking at Dean, gazing up at the roof of the car and lost in his own world of nonsense words.  
Dean sighs. “Now you’re just being silly,” he complains, crossing his arms and staring out of the window, sulking.

John fights the urge to roll his eyes at the pair of them, and fails. Thankfully, Dean isn’t looking and doesn’t see the gesture, and if Sam notices he’s too young to be bothered by it. “Pam-pal-pal-pa,” he mumbles cheerily to himself, despite the small frown creasing his brow as he leans out of his chair and reaches arms towards Dean, soft, pudgy fingers grasping. “Pa-la, pim-la, im-pla-”

“ _Dad_!” yells Dean, cutting across Sam, and there’s such alarm in his voice that John stamps on the brakes without question.

Dean nearly goes flying, manages to brace himself against the back of the passenger seat to prevent himself getting thrown against it by the sudden change of momentum. And then, as soon as he’s recovered, he’s wrenching the door open and stumbling out of the still-moving car.

The Impala grinds to a shuddery halt a moment later, and it takes John all of three seconds to realise there’s no humans or animals on the road ahead, no dark and monstrous shapes rushing their car, no other visible dangers. In the back seat, Sam’s making those short, whimpery noises that are a sure sign he’s about to burst into tears, and Dean is nowhere to be seen.

John is, in a word, furious.

“Dean!” he roars, as he drags the car door open and stumbles out onto the road, Sam’s wails starting up behind him as he leaves. He doesn’t close the car door, needs to be able to hear Sam, but the noise is damn annoying.

He scans the road and, for a heart stopping moment, can’t see Dean anywhere. The place is silent other than Sam’s strident cries and the soft rush of wind through the fields on either side of them, and it takes several heartbeats too long to identify his son amongst the nondescript surroundings.

Dean’s crouched by a box on the side of the road, leaning over it and making soft, cooing noises. For a moment, John wonders wildly if his son’s possessed, or if he’s lost his mind – and then he sees the writing in thick, black marker on the side of the box, fuzzy and smeared with rain.

_Free angel. Preferably to a broken home. VERY disobedient._

The angel doesn’t look disobedient. He’s close enough, now, to make out the shape of it, a shock of dark hair on its head and tiny, dark wings pressed flat against its back, a over-large beige trench coat covering what looks like thin, white pajamas. The creature’s only small – maybe five or six, a few years younger than Dean. From the skinniness of it, evident in the way the clothes hang off it in odd, baggy folds, the confused fear in its wide, baby-blue eyes, he suspects it was mistreated and ignored even before it was abandoned on the roadside.

Quite why anyone would discard an angel when the things are damn expensive to buy in the first place is really beyond John, but he supposes there are some people who are just bastards like that. In his experience of the supernatural world, the only creatures worse than monsters are humans.

“I- Can we keep him?” asks Dean, a note of anxious fear in his voice that John rarely hears any more, not now that Dean’s determined to be a fearless big brother for Sammy – evidently, he knows he’s pissed off his dad, even if he’s trying to pretend it doesn’t phase him. He reaches into the box, making soft _chu chu chu_  noises at the angel, holding out one hand and rubbing his fingers together until the shivering creature crawls over to sniff at them, hesitant.

John sighs, still scowling a little. For a moment, he’s tempted to say no, to order Dean to leave the thing there and get back in the car as a lesson of what happens when he scares his dad, upsets Sammy, and forces him to do an emergency stop in a car that really doesn’t appreciate them. He wipes the thought from his head almost as soon as it enters it, though – that’d be cruel, both to Dean and the angel. They need to at least take the thing to the nearest rescue center and make sure it’ll get a decent looking-after, even if it’s not by them. Although…

On the one hand, it’s a pet, and they really don’t have the time or lifestyle to support a pet. It’s hard enough with the kids as it is. On the other… if they  _had_ to get a pet, an angel’s not a bad idea. They don’t eat anything (feeding off of physical contact with their owner, or something, a conclusion that John thinks is pretty scientifically dubious but doesn’t know enough about to refute), don’t need house-training because they don’t make a mess, don’t shed other than their yearly moult, and are allowed into most motels provided they’re quiet and are kept in the room. Plus, with the right training and a good owner, they can be fiercely loyal and protective – like guard dogs, but smarter.

By the time he’s finished mulling everything over in his head, pulling his gaze away from staring at the horizon, Dean’s getting the angel out the box. He slides careful hands under its armpits and lifts, surprised at how light it is – hollow bones, he supposes, like a bird – and heaves it over the edge of the box and into his lap. For a long second, the angel just blinks at him, and he’s a little scared it’s going to lash out and scratch or bite him. As he watches, the creature’s dark wings twitch against its back.

And then it lunges forward, pressing itself against Dean and tucking its head under his chin, face warm and bumpy against his neck. A purring sort of sound builds in its chest, and Dean can feel the vibrations running through him from where they’re both curled together. Tentatively, he wraps his arms around the angel, holding it tight and close, hands resting hesitantly against its wings.

Its the little gasp Dean makes when he realises how soft they are, how silky and smooth the feathers are beneath his hands, that finally cinches it for John. He watches his son run careful, almost reverent fingers down the dark plumage, awe in his eyes, and tries to think of the last time he said yes to Dean when the kid asked him for something – a proper something, not just an ice cream or a song on the radio.

He can’t.

“…We’ll try him out,” he says, eventually. “He’ll be yours, and you’ll be responsible for training him and looking after him. I’ll help you out if you need a little money to buy stuff, but you gotta groom him and care for him in your own time. Understand? And if you can’t manage it, we’ll take him to a rescue center or something, because it’s cruelty to keep the damn thing if we can’t care for it properly.”

Dean manages to tear his eyes away from the softly vibrating ball of feathers and clothes that is the angel on his lap. “S- seriously?” he says, and the surprise in his voice almost makes John wince. He tries to do the best by his kids, honestly, but he knows that he fails on an almost daily basis. “You- I can actually keep him?”

“It,” corrects John. Considering the angel’s age, there’s pretty much no way to tell if it’s a boy or not underneath the swamp of clothes it’s sitting in. “Could be a lady angel.”  
Dean shakes his head. “His name is Castiel,” he says. “There’s a label in the back of the coat. Cas is a boy’s name, right?”  
“If you say so.” John shrugs – they’ll find out whether Dean’s right soon enough, when they bath the creature that night and he looks up an article on how, exactly, to go about sexing angels. Until then, he supposes, it may as well be a he. “C’mon, then. Get you and Cas in the car, we need to get going.”

A guilty look flashes across Dean’s face for a moment, compounded by the wails from Sam that are drifting across the tarmac, steadily descending into sulky, hitching breathing. “Thanks, dad,” he says quietly. John suspects that, if he hadn’t had an angel in his lap, Dean would currently be hugging him as hard as he could.  
“You’re gonna have to work to keep him,” John warns him, but there’s no bite to it as he stands up, stretching a little.

Dean nods vigorously, stumbling to his feet as well. It’s a little awkward with Castiel hanging off of him – the angel’s arms are still wrapped tight around his neck, and it’s only Dean’s hand under his bottom and thighs that’s keeping him from just sort of dangling there, swinging. He may be light, but his size makes him unwieldy, and Dean’s less than graceful as he makes his way across the road and into the back of the Impala.

“Hey, Sammy!” he says, as he manages to awkwardly shuffle himself and Castiel – who just won’t let go, damnit – into the back seat, closing the door after them. “Look what I found!”

Sam’s crying has mainly dropped off into grumpy little sniffles and the occasional half-hearted whine, and it stops entirely when he sees Castiel. His eyes go wide, turning into deep saucers of chocolate-brown as he stares at the angel sat in his brother’s lap; more specifically, at the angel’s wings.

“He’s an angel, and he’s called Castiel,” says Dean, sounding highly self-important. “I’m going to look after him. Say Castiel, Sammy.”  
“Cas-as-el!” manages Sam, stretching out his arms and making grabby motions towards the angel, need written all over his face. “Sa-sa-sa-sas-lel, wanna Cas-as-as-lel!”

A protective look sweeps across Dean’s face, even as Castiel hesitantly untucks his head from Dean’s neck as the engine starts up, peering around at his new surroundings and scrutinising Sam with narrowed, thoughtful eyes.

His expression quickly turns to one of alarm when Sam actually manages to reach his wings, fingers curling around a few feathers and tugging a little before they slip through his fingers.

Castiel whimpers, flashes a glimpse of white, bared teeth at Sam, and quickly curls back up in Dean’s lap, tucking his head neatly against his human’s neck again – although he’s no longer purring. Dean frowns. “No, Sammy, no pulling,” he says, firmly, smoothing his hand over the small rucked-up section on the wing. “You gotta be nice to him, okay?”

Sam’s lower lip wobbles alarmingly – which is nothing new, they have this every time he meets a cat or a dog or a horse or anything else that’s alive, looks remotely grab-able, and objects to being grabbed – and John steps in, pulling them away from the side of the road they’d parked on and off towards the horizon, turning up the volume on the radio. “C’mon, Sammy, you like this one!” he calls over the opening bars of  _Like a Bat Out of Hell_. “You gonna sing along?”

As usual, the distraction works like a dream.

It takes Dean nearly half an hour to realise that Castiel still isn’t purring, not because he’s still upset, but because he’s fallen asleep. There’s an angel, asleep, on his lap.  _His_  angel.

A sudden warmth rushes through him at the thought, and he winds his arms a little tighter around the small body in his arms. Cas is only tiny at the moment, but he’s gonna grow up big one day, and he’s gonna be the best, strongest, most loyal angel in the whole entire world. Dean knows he will, because Dean’s gonna love him with all of his heart, forever.

Castiel is going to be the best angel in the whole world ever (even if he doesn’t end up the biggest, or the strongest, although he will), because he’s going to be _Dean’s_  angel. And, no matter what, that makes him the best in Dean’s eyes.


End file.
